This production of Shakespeare's Macbeth starring John Gielgud in the title role and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Lady Macbeth, was directed by Gielgud, who said on the opening night at Manchester that he had been: 'moved in his choice of the play that its stern theme would match our stern times'. Leon Quartermaine played Banquo and Ernest Thesiger the First Witch, or Weird Sister, with Dorothy Green and Annie Esmond. It opened at the Manchester Opera House on 16th January 1942 for a two-week run, part of a long tour that culminated in its opening at London's Piccadilly Theatre on 8th July 1942. The young designer Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) had been given leave from the Forces to work on the design for the production in collaboration with John Minton (1917-1957) who had worked and travelled with Ayrton in France in the late '30s.

A review in The Guardian, 17th January 1942, noted that: 'Gielgud has been splendidly served by the settings of Mr. Michael Ayrton and Mr. John Minton and by the lighting of Mr. Stanley Earnshaw. The banquest scene, which made a gorgeous and unexpectedly spacious picture, and the darkened hall at Dunsinane where Macbeth "'gins to be a-weary of the sun and where his lady walks in shadows which no sun would ever lighten", should be long remembered.'